


all the ghosts you've ever loved

by yaqoub (seb)



Series: in quiet rooms [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Amnesia, Angst, Children, Children of Characters, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Violence, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, LifeStream Shenanigans, M/M, Newborn Children, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parenthood, The Lifestream (Compilation of FFVII), Trans Male Character, lots of tags because I want people to see this damn it, makes more sense in context, very minor but still present
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seb/pseuds/yaqoub
Summary: Cloud awakes from a nightmare into a dream. When nothing feels real, can it still be considered reality?Or: Cloud falls. Sephiroth catches him. He always does.
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: in quiet rooms [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086542
Comments: 3
Kudos: 52





	all the ghosts you've ever loved

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year! I have been stewing in this au for a while and have fallen head over heels for it. I'm so in love with this story I'm creating (I've never been so passionate about a fic before...) and I hope you enjoy it, too. If you want to share your thoughts on it on twt I would love if you'd tag it with #sciqr so I can see 👉👈  
>   
> ETA: I forgot to say the “domestic violence” tag is only there because of ONE instance of Cloud waking up to Sephiroth in a panic (SPOILER: he chokes Sephiroth). But it’s still present so I thought it appropriate to tag it.

_ There is no heat to this fire, but there is searing pain all the same. Sephiroth’s eyes bore into the side of his skull. Tifa won’t meet his gaze. _

_ “You are just a puppet,” Sephiroth says, voice a low rumble. “You have no heart and cannot feel any pain.” His hair settles like molten lava over his shoulder, falling forward as he tilts his head. “Do you understand?” _

_ “I don’t want to understand,” Cloud spits. He tears his eyes away from Tifa to glare at Sephiroth, hands clenching. The heat of the fire isn’t around him because it’s within him, burning his body to his bones. He can feel it coursing through his blood as he stands his ground, desperate to face Sephiroth but also to keep Tifa close. _

_ “I want to take you back to your real self,” Sephiroth says. The fire consuming Nibelheim warps like heat rising from pavement. It hurts his eyes and he reaches out for Tifa to protect her— but she’s gone. Everything is gone, save for him and Sephiroth. Sephiroth’s arms rest at his sides as everything falls away, replaced by an eerie, blinding mako green. “The one who gave me the Black Materia that day.” _

_ “Shut up,” Cloud says, his hands coming up to cover his ears. He squeezes his eyes shut, curling in on himself. He falls to his knees, the world crumbling in on and around him. “Sephiroth,” he murmurs before pummeling into darkness. _

Cloud awakes in a panic, gasping for air. He shuts his eyes, twisting as he claws at his head, willing it all away. His legs are tangled up in some kind of fabric as he kicks and pulls desperately to escape.

“Cloud…” he hears, gentle and whisper-soft. Cloud’s body goes cold and still before he whips his head to the side to find  _ Sephiroth, _ concern etched in the furrow of his brow and downward slant of his mouth.

Faster than thought, Cloud flips to straddle Sephiroth’s waist, hands coming up to grip his throat. His breath is coming in short and erratic bursts through his teeth, eyes burning with tears. Sephiroth’s head tilts back, eyes wide with something Cloud can’t quite pin down. His hands are shaking minutely where they come up to rest open-palmed above his head. Despite it all, he’s breathing steadily, deeply. Cloud can feel his pulse beneath his palm. He tightens his grip.

Sephiroth’s eyes close, brows stitched together as he swallows as best he can with Cloud’s hands at his throat. Cloud follows the movement, watching how his hands form around it. The glint of metal on his left hand catches his eye. He jerks his gaze back up to Sephiroth’s pained face, then to his hands. A matching band adorns his left hand.

Cloud rips his hands away from Sephiroth’s throat, pressing them to his chest as he crawls through an ocean of sheets to get away from him. There’s a blanket at the end of the bed, grey and soft, worn at the edges; Cloud snatches it up, wrapping it around himself. Sephiroth stays in place, regaining his breath. Cloud can only watch.

An eternity passes before Sephiroth is pushing himself up into a sitting position. Cloud flinches instinctively, drawing himself further away from the other man. Sephiroth rubs at his throat for a moment, taking a final, deep breath before he opens his eyes. He doesn’t look at Cloud.

“Where am I?” Cloud chokes out. His throat feels hoarse, his tongue heavy where he bites down on it to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Home,” Sephiroth says simply. He sounds sad. “Nibelheim.”

Cloud bristles. “Where my mom?”

“She’s out at work.”

“Why are you here?” Cloud asks, spit like venom in the space between them on the bed.

Sephiroth smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s quite a long story, Cloud.”

Cloud fights to breathe deeper, watching as Sephiroth crosses his legs beneath the blanket and rests his hands on them. He looks down at them, eventually, spinning the band on his left hand back and forth. Finally, he sighs. “Would you like some tea?”

“Do I have a choice?” Cloud asks, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself.

Sephiroth lets out a breath of a laugh. “You always have a choice.”

When Cloud says nothing more, Sephiroth pushes the blanket back and shifts his legs until his feet hit the floor. He rolls his shoulders and pushes up off the bed, stretching again once he’s standing. He’s in simple grey sweatpants and, as he rounds the corner of the bed, slips into a pair of worn, fuzzy slippers. He opens the door and pauses, looking slightly over his shoulder.

Cloud keeps his eyes on Sephiroth as he grabs the nearest bedpost and stumbles off the side. There are slippers at this corner of the bed, too, but Cloud ignores them. The thin socks he’s wearing make his footsteps almost silent. Still, Sephiroth moves out of the doorway as Cloud approaches, gesturing forward with his hand. Warily, Cloud lets himself be guided.

The hallway is wide; probably wide enough for Cloud to walk through with both of his elbows up. Glancing back to look at Sephiroth every few moments keeps him from testing it. There are few doors in the hallway, most of them closed. One door is ajar, and Cloud catches glimpses of soft lavender and yellow as he walks by.

There’s a staircase at the end of the hallway that Cloud goes down slowly, ducking his head to get a look at the floor beneath. Familiarity crashes into him like a wave. It’s  _ home, _ if not a bit altered. To the right of him is a living room, which is new. The kitchen to his left is just like he remembers. He gravitates towards it, runs his hands over the sink, the shelves. He reaches the kitchen table and drops onto the bench, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself.

As Sephiroth crosses his vision to put a kettle on the stove, Cloud catches sight of a single yellow flower in a vase on the table in front of him. It’s wilted, but just a bit. Cloud knows he shouldn’t touch, that it just makes it wilt faster, but he can’t help but knock the curl of a petal up with his finger. The flower rocks along the lip of the vase as it’s jostled, tiny specks of pollen falling onto the placemat below it.

Sephiroth takes the kettle off the stove before it whistles and pours two cups of tea. He puts sugar in both and a splash of cream in one, then brings the mismatched mugs over to the table. He sets the one without cream down in front of Cloud, who wraps his hands around it gratefully. The other stays on the table as Sephiroth pulls one leg up onto the stool he’s sitting on and leans back against the wall, looking at the vase on the table.

“How are you feeling?” Sephiroth asks, picking at lint on his sweatpants.

“Confused.”

“Another nightmare, hm?”

“I suppose,” Cloud murmurs, staring down into his tea. “It felt very real. This doesn’t.”

“That’s fair,” Sephiroth responds. He lays his hands on his knee and rests his chin on top, looking very small for a man of his stature.

When the tea cools, Cloud tentatively takes a sip. The warmth rushes through him, gets blood rushing through his stiff limbs. “This tastes good,” Cloud says, aiming to stop the suffocating silence.

Sephiroth nods his head, the faintest of smiles on his lips. “I’m glad you like it.”

The silence isn’t so suffocating afterwards. Cloud relaxes into his seat, no longer flinching at Sephiroth’s every move, and Sephiroth allows himself to straighten up and breathe. They drink their tea through the air of tension, Cloud’s gaze straying to Sephiroth’s bruising throat and Sephiroth refraining from returning it.

A sudden, shrill cry rings out, startling Cloud into sitting stiffly upright. It’s a baby’s cry, muffled but loud. He looks around frantically, confused, gathering his blanket to stand; but Sephiroth waves his hand at him, standing to turn off a monitor on the counter. “They’re awake,” he hums. He looks at Cloud for the first time since Cloud had his hands at his throat. He’s smiling. “You sit tight.”

Cloud watches him go back up the stairs until he can’t anymore. Only then does he turn back to his tea, staring into his muddled reflection. He sees himself; sees the same tired blond he always has. Quickly, he pinches the inside of his forearm. He sucks in a sharp breath at the sting and smooths his hand over his skin. Somehow, he isn’t convinced that this isn’t a dream.

The stairs creak as Sephiroth comes back down, holding a bundle of blankets in each arm. As he makes his way closer, Cloud notices the way the blankets wriggle, the way Sephiroth looks down at them with nothing but pure elation. Closer still, and Cloud sees faces in those blankets, scrunched up around bright-colored pacifiers.

“Can you pull the bottles out of the fridge, please?” Sephiroth asks with practiced ease, as if it’s routine.

Cloud realizes that for him, it might be. “Yeah,” he says, standing from the bench, however uncertain he is. “Sure thing.”

Sephiroth throws a thank you over his shoulder as he makes his way to the living room, bouncing on his feet as he walks. Dazedly, Cloud shuffles over to the fridge, muscle memory turning his gaze to the door. There are two bottles on the top shelf that he grabs and stares at as he closes the fridge door with his hip. The cold of the bottle against his hands, warmed by his tea, is grounding somehow. When Sephiroth reappears in the kitchen, Cloud places the bottles in his open hands.

With a deep nod, Sephiroth turns and places the bottles in a warmer. As he waits, he leans against the counter, crossing his arms over his bare chest. When Cloud looks up, Sephiroth is looking at him with a tilted head. “Want to help?”

“Uh,” Cloud starts eloquently. He wrings the edge of the blanket in his hands. The warmer hums in the silence between them. Finally, Cloud inhales slow and deep, nodding his head on the exhale. “Okay.”

It’s not long before the warmer stops with a pop of a button. Sephiroth turns to take the bottles out, shaking his hand when the steam lingers for too long. He takes one bottle in each hand, pressing his finger over the nipple and shaking them gently. After, he squeezes a drop of each bottle onto his wrist. “Perfect,” he hums, then hands a bottle to Cloud.

They make their way to the living room, Cloud following closely behind Sephiroth, like he’s more scared of the babies than the man he tried to kill earlier in the morning. There’s a double rocker by the coffee table that Sephiroth sits down in front of, patting the space next to him. The babies blink up at him, kicking their feet and gurgling around their pacifiers.

Sephiroth pops the pacifier out of one of the baby’s mouths and replaces it with the bottle. The baby instantly latches on, hands coming up as if to hold the bottle. Maybe the baby appreciates the warmth, Cloud thinks, pulling the blanket tighter over his shoulder. It seems to be getting cold out.

He turns his attention to the baby in front of him and follows Sephiroth’s example. The baby is reluctant to give up the pacifier, but enthusiastically latches onto the bottle, hands flailing for a moment before reaching up to touch Cloud’s. His breath catches in his lungs as bright blue eyes stare up at him, drooping and fluttering back open every few seconds, like the baby doesn’t want to look away. Cloud reaches out to touch the baby’s cheek, caressing the soft skin as he tilts the bottle, keeping the bubbles at bay.

“Sephiroth?” Cloud says quietly, playing with the collar of the soft orange sleepsuit the baby is wearing.

“Hmm?” Sephiroth hums, holding one of the baby’s hands in his.

“What are their names?”

Sephiroth looks pained as he closes his eyes for a moment. He rubs the top of the baby’s chubby fingers with his thumb as he breathes in deep. When he opens his eyes, he frees his hand of the baby’s hold, placing it on the baby’s chest instead. “Selene,” he says, rubbing the fuzzy yellow sleepsuit. He moves his hand to touch the other baby’s leg, wiggling it a little. “Freyr.”

Cloud nods, not knowing what else to do. Sephiroth goes back to holding Selene’s hand as she finishes off her bottle in big gulps. Freyr is lagging behind a bit, taking slower sips as his eyes droop further and further. Cloud runs his hand over his head, brushing back soft, silver hair. Freyr’s hand curls where it rests on Cloud’s other hand, like he wants to hold on as he dozes away.

He snaps out of the daze when he hears the pop of Selene letting go of her bottle. Sephiroth is rubbing her tummy, scrunching up his face and shaking his head around as he looks at her. His hair falls around her, glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. She tilts her head up and makes a drawn out sound, earning a delighted laugh from Sephiroth. He wedges his hands beneath her, lifting her up and nuzzling her face. She kicks her feet excitedly as he presses her to his chest, laying her head on his shoulder. 

Sephiroth sways slightly in place, eyes closed as he pats her back gently. She’s cooing, grabbing onto rivulets of silver hair. He hums right back, turning his head to blow a raspberry on her cheek. Suddenly, she takes a hiccup of a breath, then burps,  _ loud. _ Sephiroth brightens, chuckling as he rubs her back. “That was a big one,” he says, nuzzling the side of her face again. She pulls on his hair and he smiles through a wince, lowering her back into the rocker and freeing his hair from her grip.

Cloud looks down at Freyr as he drinks the last of his bottle, careful to pull back so he doesn’t suck in air. He sets the bottle down, hesitating as Freyr wriggles in the rocker. Cloud slides his hands under him gingerly, lifting him up and pressing him to his chest. He’s rubbing Freyr’s back when he feels a hand on his shoulder and freezes. Sephiroth slides a piece of fabric under Freyr’s head and smooths his hand over Cloud’s shoulder. “Careful,” he says, looking behind Cloud, at Freyr. “He spits up.”

“Oh.” Cloud swallows down the trepidation in his throat at Sephiroth touching him so gently and pats Freyr’s back, careful not to bounce or sway and upset his tummy. He lets out a burp, less mighty in light of his sister’s performance, but enough to be sated. By the time Cloud lays him back down in the rocker, he’s fast asleep.

Sephiroth lets out a breath, smoothing his hands up and down his thighs. “Well,” he says, slouching a little on an exhale. “That’s that.” He brushes his hair out of his face and holds it at the top of his head, eyes closed as he thinks. Cloud draws the blanket around him, looking from the babies resting in the rocker, to the crocheted blanket tossed over the back of the couch, to the cut of Sephiroth’s jaw as it clenches and relaxes.

Eventually, Sephiroth sighs, dropping his hand. Cloud looks away hurriedly. “You get back to your tea,” he says, drumming his fingers on his thigh.

“What are you going to do?” Cloud asks, looking back just as fast as he’d looked away.

There’s a breath of a laugh, empty of any mirth. “That’s a good question,” he responds. Worrying a few strands of hair between his fingers, he continues. “Send out notices about deliveries being late. Invite Aerith over for lunch.”

Cloud’s breath hitches, hands fisted in the blanket. “Aerith?”

Sephiroth tosses him a confused look. “Yes, Aerith,” he says slowly. “I’m sure she can wiggle her way out of the mansion to see you.”

“The mansion…” Cloud’s chest feels tight, throat clogging up with emotion. 

“Well,” Sephiroth starts with a shrug. “It’s not, you know, Shinra mansion anymore.” Cloud watches the way he weaves his hair through his fingers, tying knots and flicking it about before smoothing it out straight again. “More of a rehabilitation and resource center. Aerith does a wonderful job running it.” He stops playing with his hair suddenly, as if he’s just realized he’s doing it, and combs his fingers through it instead. “We call it that, still. Kind of silly, now that I think about it. It’s so much more than Shinra ever could have ever made it.”

They sit together for a moment, quiet as Cloud tries to sort through the cotton in his head. It doesn’t make  _ sense; _ but he isn’t surprised, considering he woke up to Sephiroth in his bed this morning. Something inside him is screaming to understand— but understand what? This dream, or this reality?

Sephiroth moves, startling Cloud as he reaches for the edge of the coffee table to push himself up until he’s standing. There’s a bookcase against the opposite wall, filled with books, knickknacks, and stationary, all organized neatly and thoughtfully. Sephiroth runs a finger along the spines of a shelf of books, back and forth until he decides on one and slides it out carefully. There’s a worn journal at the end of the shelf and he picks it up before turning back to drop onto the couch and lay his findings out on the table.

Gathering that the conversation is over, Cloud pushes up to stand and shuffles back to the kitchen. His tea is cold, but he wraps his hands around the mug as he sits in front of it anyway. It tastes amazing despite the lack of warmth. He spares a glance at the other mug on the table, abandoned. Curiosity is a cruel mistress, but he refuses to let it get the best of him. He’ll put cream in his own tea before he sneaks a sip of Sephiroth’s.

A nudge to his foot nearly makes him jump out of his own skin. He pulls his feet up onto the bench and glances under to find a cat jumping back, stunned. It’s a Siamese, lanky and long, tail flicking at it peers up at him, pupils blown wide. After a split second of eye contact, it dashes out from under the table with a loud  _ mrrp. _ It joins another cat- this one with the same pattern but cream colored- by the stairs in running to the couch. Their collars jingle as they jump onto the back and onto Sephiroth, who laughs and raises an arm to pet them both.

Cloud can only watch. The cats butt their head against Sephiroth. One falls into his lap while the other curls up against his neck. He leans back, raising his book to read it as he accommodates them. His foot peeks out from behind the couch and bumps the rocker, then catches the edge to rock the babies slowly. It’s calm; natural, even. Cloud looks away, feeling like he’s invading his own home.

The next sip of his tea tastes bitter.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I can't promise updates will be regular. However, I have this whole fic outlined and have been on a writing spree with it! I wrote this first chapter in a couple days because I've been SO excited to put it out into the world.  
>   
> My Twitter handle is @sefizakura. I look forward to hearing what y'all think about this little story of mine!


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